Something a bit different today, friends! Writer J. D. Harlock approached me about doing this interview with graphic novelist Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury about her new erotic graphic novel, “Titties.” It’s a fascinating read and I can’t wait to read the comic, too.
Amy x
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury’s Titties: Resistance Against Misogynistic Censorship in the Arab World with Erotic Graphic Novels by J. D. Harlock
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury is a SWANA graphic novelist who, after graduating from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in 2015, sought to immerse herself in the world of visual storytelling. Following years of honing her craft in the Lebanese art scene, Nour joined Samandal Comics, a SWANA comics collective in Lebanon dedicated to developing the medium of comics in the Arab World. Currently, her work is primarily focused on autofiction, which presents intimate stories with an exaggerated art style in hopes of accentuating them.
Recently, Nour agreed to sit down for an interview to discuss her semi-autobiographical erotic graphic novel Titties. Titties explores the tumultuous sex life of a character loosely based on the author in one-page stories recounting adventures with various sexual partners. By presenting these encounters in an unapologetically explicit manner, Nour hopes to provoke the reader to confront the uncomfortable realities prohibition, repression, and marginalization of sexual experiences. Ultimately, this fearless act of transgression is all in service of pushing the limits of self-expression in Lebanon, where censorship is increasingly present, with few options left to resist the status quo.
Here are some highlights from my conversation with Nour.
J. D. Harlock: As someone who’s been blessed to have spent his entire life in Beirut, it pains me to say this, but the Arab world isn’t known as a hub for graphic novelists, such as yourself, Nour. Even if titles are available in bookshops in Lebanon, the selection is typically limited to a select few titles from countries like the US, France, Belgium, Japan, and the UK. Speaking from experience, it’s almost impossible for a local to read enough to learn the craft without spending a fortune or sailing the high seas of digital piracy. In addition to my excitement when I meet a fellow comics fan from this part of the world, I’m always curious to find out how they became fans of the medium in the first place. So Nour, tell us how you first came to experience the exhilarating world of sequential art?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: When I was a child, a French comic artist whose name I can’t recall came to our school for a presentation. What intrigued me was the notion that you could draw the same character over and over for pages to tell a story. Back then, people used to call me “Miss Curious” because I would ask too many questions about people’s lives. I wanted to hear their stories, the intimate ones—the ones they wouldn’t share over coffee with a neighbor. It is as if I wanted to know the origin stories of people, where they come from, and how they became who they are.
Of course, this desire is directly connected to Palestine, where lies my own origin story, which I’ve unfortunately never had the chance to explore in person due to the Zionist occupation. Since words were never my strong point, I’ve always had difficulties expressing myself through writing. Doing it through drawing, however, was seamless. Even when I hear a song, I rarely focus on the words, but feel the feelings in the images.
So, between my love for stories and my connection to drawing, it was evident I’d specialize in it. Of course, now I’ve also tamed the world of words, and I use them more and more in my dialogues and descriptions. However, when I first started illustrating comics, most of them were silent.
J. D. Harlock: How did you end up joining Samandal Comics?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: My introduction to Samandal Comics happened while I was at university. I discovered their publications for the first time and realized that there was a comics scene in Lebanon with an audience for adult comics. Eventually, I met Lena Merhej, one of the founders of Samandal Comics, while working on an anthology in which we both have stories featured. A year later, Samandal member Joseph Kai invited me, Karen Keyrouz, and Tracy Chehwan to join the collective and have our generation take the lead. Without hesitation, I agreed.
J. D. Harlock: And why did you choose Samandal to be the publisher of Titties?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: I chose Samandal to be my publisher because I wanted my story published and read in Lebanon by Lebanese people. However, when it came time to print the comic, the printing house had reservations about the content. It was too explicit and daring. My second option was to print it with our collective in France and then distribute it in Lebanon, which is what I ended up doing.
J. D. Harlock: What inspired Titties?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: I recently read several comics by Ulli Lust and Julie Doucet. I loved their narrative style—works of autofiction revealing so much vulnerability and crudeness while simultaneously depicting relationships with intimacy. These comics made me reflect on both my narrative style and my relationships.
Meanwhile, I was in an open relationship for the first time, and I was hooking up with several people at the same time. Navigating that experience for the first time in my life was eye-opening. After each sexual encounter, I started drawing pages as if to process what had happened, and I would share them with friends as a way to recount to them what was happening and have a laugh. After a few months of doing so, I realized that I had what could become a comic.
J. D. Harlock: Given the subject matter and how conservative certain segments of Lebanon are, were you worried about any potential backlash from its release?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: Of course, I was worried, but I also knew that this comic would be distributed in safe spaces. As for my parents and family, I knew they wouldn’t read and see it. They are absolutely not my target audience. However, both my parents knew I was publishing it. Obviously, my mother wasn’t pleased, but she understood that this was my life and my work. She knew how to detach herself from it. On the other hand, my father has no clue what’s inside the comic; he only knows it’s a feminist work exploring women’s sexuality.
J. D. Harlock: So, how would you describe the response to the release of Titties so far?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: The response was wonderful. Initially, we printed a small batch to see how readers would react. It sold out right away, so we printed several more editions and all of them sold out, too! A friend of mine had to buy more than ten copies because each time his visitors saw it, they’d snatch it off his shelf! Eventually, it reached the shores of Italy. An Italian publisher translated it into Italian and sold copies of it there, too.
J. D. Harlock: What were you hoping to achieve by sharing these experiences?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: I wanted to normalize discussions of sexuality and sexual orientation in Lebanon so that we can be open to experimenting and exploring our kinks. Readers were meant to laugh with the protagonist, shattering the taboos that repress our sexual experimentation. I hoped to accomplish this through the “female gaze,” which is frankly lacking in Lebanese literature.
I also wanted to connect sex to the external world—politics, nonsexual traumas, and their impact on the body and desire. We tend to think of sex as a purely sexual act. But it is informed by everything that surrounds us. There is no way to tell if this is what my readers got out of reading Titties, but I received great feedback from readers. I hope this story impacted them the way I hoped it would.
J. D. Harlock: Do you plan to release more work in the vein of Titties in the future?
Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury: Yes, I am currently working on the second tome of this comic, Titties Too, in which the character explores her bisexuality or pansexuality also through an open relationship. At the same time, I’m also working on an erotic lesbian graphic novel called Labrys with a Belgian publishing house that’s even more visually explicit, in which the characters are in a long-distance relationship. With this graphic novel, I hope to explore long-distance sexuality facilitated by new technologies such as vibrators connected to phones.
J. D. Harlock: And that’s a wrap for now! Thank you for your time, Nour. As always, I’m looking forward to reading these graphic novels—as I usually am with all of Samandal Comics’ releases when they first hit Lebanese shelves. And I hope we can have another interesting deep-dive about them when the time comes!
About the Writer
J. D. Harlock is an Eisner-nominated SWANA American writer, researcher, editor, and academic pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of St. Andrews. His writing has appeared in Business Insider, Newsweek, The Cincinnati Review, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, The Griffith Review, Queen’s Quarterly, and New York University’s Library of Arabic Literature. You can find him on LinkedIn, Bluesky, Twitter & Instagram.